


For Your Eyes Only

by yikesola



Series: Renee's Very Own Bingo Card [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, Early Days, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Despite what the jealousy clawing out from his gut had him say, Phil isn’t his. Phil isn’t his so much so that someone’s flirting with him on Twitter. Someone who, for once, isn’t Dan. Or at least, that’s what Dan’s nerves have convinced him.A fic about spirals and uncertainty.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: Renee's Very Own Bingo Card [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976617
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53





	For Your Eyes Only

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of [cal](http://calvinahobbes.tumblr.com) and [keelin](http://ahappydnp.tumblr.com) graciously providing me with my very own bingo card! <3  
> 💛Bingo Squares: One Direction “If I Could Fly”

_oi he’s mine_

Dan types it furiously. He types it without thinking. Because that’s what Dan does, react emotionally and bitingly except when it would give satisfaction— to himself or a nebulous _them_ or anyone. 

But there’s no satisfaction to be had because as soon as he posts the tweet, Dan panics. What a stupid fucking thing to say. What a goddamn presumptuous thing to say. 

Despite what the jealousy clawing out from his gut had him say, Phil isn’t his. 

Phil isn’t his so much so that someone’s flirting with him on Twitter. Someone who, for once, isn’t Dan. Or at least, that’s what Dan’s nerves have convinced him. Hence the possessive response. 

He’s spiralling, and more than that he’s pretty sure the only person who could calm him down is the person causing this agony. His best friend. The only person who doesn’t make him feel ridiculous for being himself for like the first time in his entire life. 

He rolls over in his bed and presses his face flat into the pillow. He could scream. He might scream. 

To scream would take too much energy. He can barely breathe. 

He turns his face, and the oxygen comes back but the anxiety still sticks around.

The buzz of his phone in his pocket is mostly muffled. He digs for it and sees Phil’s name, and despite the rapid-fire pulse he’s currently experiencing, it feels really good. Phil’s name, because he has Phil’s number saved in his phone and because Phil is talking to him and fuck he _actually_ talks all the time with actual AmazingPhil, so much so that the ‘amazing’ has dropped from Phil’s name. 

Which feels a little ironic because the more they talk, the more amazing Dan thinks he is. 

He groans at that thought and how stupidly gone he already is on this boy and opens the message. 

It isn’t even about the tweet. It isn’t the expected, dreaded, _Uhh Dan, I think you’ve got the wrong idea..._. It’s just Phil asking if he should clarify that he was joking the other day when he said someone should send a PS3 to his PO box. He says he doesn’t know what he would have to do if someone actually did. _Like, would I send it back???_

Dan ignores it. For a bit. For right now. He can’t answer. He can’t think of something to say that isn’t pure fucking stupidity. 

Sure, unless he was at work or bizarrely around irl friends, he’d text Phil back right away. But his anxiety has gotten to the point where he’s actually lightheaded now. 

Then he hears the tweet chime from his laptop. Dan sits up and sees a reply from Phil. _@danisnotonfire lmao <3 (Txt me then O__o)_

Phil saw the tweet and doesn’t hate him. Phil wants Dan to text him. Phil is his friend. He _wants_ to talk to Dan. He _likes_ talking to Dan. He isn’t just being nice, he isn’t secretly annoyed and tired of Dan. He isn’t secretly regretting the day Dan barged into his life. If he was, he’d have just let the text go unanswered for more than four minutes. Even if it isn’t necessarily romantic, even if he still can convince himself anxiously that Phil isn’t actually flirting with him during those late night Skype calls, even if it’s all a part of this weird and wonderful friendship— it’s there. 

Unarguable. 

Dan takes as many long slow deep breaths as he can while saying that over to himself. It’s so easy to think he’s being a bother. To think he’s being a fucking burden. 

But then Phil will do something like this and even Dan can’t argue, because he and Phil get on. The jealous and possessive and greedy and selfish corners of his mind that beg and claw for more, all while laughing a cruel sort of taunt that Phil begrudges giving Dan everything he does— they can’t argue that Phil didn’t _have_ to tweet this. 

So maybe his brain is just fucking wrong. 

He’s not exactly surprised his brain was able to lie to him. He wasn’t expecting this thing with Phil to feel so intense. Definitely not so soon. He thought he was just gonna get to know the fit emo guy he’s been watching on YouTube for years. And now he’s let his guard down. Right now he’s completely defenceless— right now he thinks he might give up everything. If Phil only asked him. 

He types his text back and sends it before he can spiral again. _sorry, was showering :3 needy much?_

Phil’s reply is fast, like Dan suspected it would be. Like it almost always is. That too makes it a little harder for his brain to argue that Phil secretly hates talking to him. He sends, _Needy always lol Sorry to interrupt :P_

The banter is back, right there, natural and easy like it always is. Phil is the Phil that— as far as Dan knows— exists for his eyes only. He isn’t AmazingPhil. He’s Dan’s best friend, Phil. 

Dan answers then Phil answers and back and forth and eventually they stop for the day, but the whole thing included many good jokes and a few editing tips and one or two existential musings. Dan’s lack of object permanence may convince him as soon as they’re done talking, as soon as he’s trying to fall asleep in the bed he hasn’t budged from since he had a wee three hours ago, that Phil couldn’t have meant it the way Dan did. That Phil’s just being nice because he _is_ impossibly nice and Dan is stupid for holding onto this crush that evolved into something and now doesn’t exactly seem to have anywhere to go. He’s too afraid to hope it might. He’s too afraid to imagine Phil could like him back when it is still hard to convince himself that Phil so much as tolerates him.

But that spiral isn’t happening now. Right now he’s feeling warm and less alone than usual because he’s thinking of the comment Phil made almost fourteen hours ago about how he thinks October is going to be good.

Dan thinks so too. He’s hoping so. 

He’s hoping this isn’t just an emotionally exhausting waste of time. He hopes that Phil won’t run from him.

Still… the more time passes, the more Phil seems to be running towards him. Not away, like Dan fears. And like Phil’s tweet, that’s pretty hard for his brain to argue with.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/632331012520706048/calvinahobbes-and-ahappydnp-harnessed-my-whining) !


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